Old School

Overnight readers of HeyMiller.com may have experienced some weirdness in this space. I was uploading a batch of my early and missing writings from the Wall Street Journal to this website. In the process, I accidentally posted them here rather than marking them as articles. I went to bed unaware of the blunder.

Anyway, it’s been fixed. I’ll add links soon. Meanwhile, just for fun, here’s the first article I ever wrote for the Journal. It’s on the “Rainbow Curriculum,” which was a sorry attempt by New York City public schools to ram lessons drenched in political correctness down the throats of students and parents. At the time, I was working for Linda Chavez at the Manhattan Institute. The curriculum was generating controversy and commentary, but few people had actually seen it or read it. We managed to obtain a copy. I drafted an op-ed and Linda faxed it to a contact at the Journal. It was 1993. People still used fax machines.

To my surprise and delight, the Journal accepted the piece almost immediately. It was one of my most exciting moments in journalism. And I’ve always been grateful to Linda. I had been working for her for only about three months. A lot of bosses would have stolen the content or at least have insisted on sharing the byline. She didn’t. It was an example of how mentors are supposed to behave. Now that I’m in the position of working with younger writers, I’ve tried to emulate it.